Dear Kids,
         I have even less news to report this week than usual, because I’ve been down in bed since Thursday with a stomach virus.  I’m hoping to finally be able to eat today. I haven’t really been hungry, but food always tastes so good to me, and there isn’t much else going on in my life.  While I’ve been sick, the kitties have spent lots of time on our bed keeping me company.  Mostly Sonia, I guess, but Scout has put in some time.  Tina’s been very deficient in that regard–she has never  cuddled up with humans. We do see signs that she’s becoming a real cat, however–a couple of days ago I caught her in a real fight with Scout, both of them rolling on the floor like one big ball of striped fur, rabbit kicking, biting, head grabbing, the whole business.  But Tina walked away in disgust when she saw me watching.  As far as we know, this was her first real true cat fight,  so Scout is having a good effect on her.
         We’ve had some activity on the cabin reconstruction;  well, not any actual work, but signs that it might happen someday.  I was talking to Rob Sorensen, our insurance agent, about one of the financial transactions, and while I had him on the phone, I said we were also concerned about how slowly Servicemaster seems to work.  They’ve been been working on Donna’s bathroom for several months now, and I told him that at that same rate, it would take about five years to reconstruct our cabin.  Rob said he’d look into it.  I guess he did, because that afternoon we got a call from the Servicemaster guy (Scott Lewis) saying he wanted us to meet with himself and the general contractor who’s in charge of the reconstruction.  We met them at the cabin on Wednesday morning, where it was about zero degrees.  We walked around inside and outside, looking at the damage, and the contractor told us how he’ll go about fixing everything.  He seems really competent, and he’s obviously had a lot of experience.  But when Dad asked when the work would actually start, Scott said they had a lot of projects going, and they weren’t exactly sure.  He also mentioned that it could take a long time to get the materials, maybe up to three months.  That wasn’t very encouraging.  But at least they know we expect it to be done sometime.
         It just started snowing outside.  I hope we get a lot!  Our old snow was mostly packed down and melted.
         I hope you’re all well and happy.  Love, Mom